puzzle pieces and self-harm

It took me longer to gather my thoughts on the self-harm relapse than I figured, but I'm ready now. I think though that I'm going to start with a couple small things that brought a little joy to my day. (Partially doing this because of a suggestion from Bipolar Freak, who said this to me on Twitter last week: "I think one day you should write about some of the things that make you most happy, besides cutting.")

I got a letter in the mail today from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation asking me to donate money. Normally I don't pay that much attention to letters like this, but this leafy-green puzzle piece caught my eye. It was peaking out through a plastic window in the envelope. On the outside of the envelope printed in big letters was a fundraising campaign slogan that starts with "This could be the piece to solve the puzzle..."

Like I've said plenty of times before on here, I don't believe in coincidences. I believe everything happens for a reason, so I believe I got a puzzle piece in the mail today for a reason.

So what could the puzzle piece possibly mean to me right now?

I've also said before that having mental illnesses has often made me feel like my brain is a puzzle that's missing several pieces. With my struggles lately, I really have felt like there's a piece of the puzzle that's been missing. I actually even thought about that the other day, so getting this puzzle piece in the mail today was odd.

Another thing I always say is that working as a newspaper page designer is like putting a puzzle together. I have to take all the pieces (articles, photos, graphics, ads, etc.) and fit them together into a complete picture. Obviously, my job has been a struggle lately too, so it feels like there's just something missing from my work situation that's making me hate the job altogether.

There's a third thing the "missing piece" could mean. Something came up today that indicates finding a specific thing that's been missing in my life. This is, in my mind, the most likely connection between the puzzle piece and my life, but I can't explain what this means on the blog. If you're curious about it, either send me an email (bpdokc@yahoo.com) or message me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/BPDINOKC).

After getting the puzzle piece in the mail and putting a lot of thought into its meaning has given me an idea for a new art project. I'm going to create some sort of multimedia collage based around the idea of a puzzle that's missing specific pieces. The concept of a new project really cheered me up today.


Another thing that brought some joy to my day was finding a long-desired item at a thrift store that just opened up around the corner from my house. On my way to work, I stopped by the store just to check it out since I hadn't went in there since it opened. As I was walking by the Christmas section, I happened to notice a box that made me feel like a kid in a candy store.

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while probably remember my now infamous Christmas list. Near the top of the list is "anything and everything Leg Lamp." The Leg Lamp is the famous lamp from the "A Christmas Story" movie. I've been obsessed with the lamp for as long as I can remember despite hating the movie itself. I only got a couple of the Leg Lamp items for Christmas because the stores sold out of it all so quickly that my family couldn't get much of it. I found the nite-lite at the thrift store for only 81 cents... yep less than a dollar when it was over $10 in Walmart a few months ago.

Onto the self-harm ...

For the most part, self-harm is an addiction. Once the thought of cutting gets planted in my head, it takes forever to get it back out of my head. It's been on my mind for over four months now ... constantly on my mind. I think about cutting all the time. I obsess over the idea, but I haven't actually cut in over two years. I have really good self-control when it comes to cutting, whether it seems like it to the outside world or not.

When I get stressed out, the desire to self-harm gets worse. I want something to distract myself from the stress. I need a release from the tension, so cutting seems like a logical choice to me.

I'm hesitant to say much about my job because some of my coworkers and bosses read my blog, but I will say that in the last several months, the job has felt more and more like hell every day. We've been short-handed a lot lately, meaning that we've each been doing more work than we used to. Things are constantly changing day-to-day, and it's so hard to keep up. It always feels like they expect me to be Super Woman and to do way more work than any one person can handle.

I used to be able to get done with my work by about 15 minutes before our deadlines, but lately it always comes down to the very last second. Some days I sit in my desk for 6 hours straight without ever getting up because I frankly don't have time to even stand up. I hold in my pee for hours sometimes because I'm too busy to go to the restroom. Some days I don't eat anything at all during my 8-plus hours there, and sometimes I drink less than half a bottle of water in a work day.

In the last few minutes leading up to deadlines, I almost always feel like I'm going to go into a panic attack. I get migraines. My stomach starts turning. I feel weak and dizzy from not eating. My heart races. I honestly just can't take it anymore.

So the other night, I just broke down immediately after our first deadline. I needed to do something to distract myself from that intense stress, so I started hitting my wrist. I tried to do it hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to bruise, but that didn't work because it did bruise a little after all. I kept pulling my hair for hours, which surprisingly helps migraines, at least for me.

When I'm going through all that deadline-related stress, all I can think of is wanting to go into the restroom and cut. I run through the things I have with me that I can cut with. It used to be that I would just have plastic silverware that I could scratch myself with hard enough to barely cut flesh. But now I have a brand-new pair of scissors I had taken to the office after getting them free on a mystery shopping assignment, and I have the pocket knife that ex-fiance gave me a few months ago that I keep in my purse. Frankly, it was a very stupid thing of him to give me a pocket knife, and I knew that at the time he gave it to me. I'm sure he never thought about how bad it was to give it to me. No one wants to think about someone cutting.